Your Brain Is Too Polite
Thoughts on Thanksgiving, groupthink, and staying safe
This is a modified excerpt from Inside Your Head 🧠, a weekly newsletter exploring why your brain makes you think, feel, and act the way you do, written by me, Elemental’s senior writer and a former brain scientist. Subscribe here so you won’t miss the next one.
Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday. No gifts, no religious ties, just family and food. Obviously, this year’s Thanksgiving is different from years past. And while I wish everyone would hibernate inside their homes — or at the very least not embark on interstate travel — until spring (and a coronavirus vaccine) arrives, I realize that many people aren’t going to do that, including some of my closest friends.
This isn’t a shaming newsletter (there’s enough of that going around already) but a harm reducing one. If you are going to see your extended family or friends this week, here are a few ways to keep you and your loved ones safe by watching out for common cognitive biases, plus a few tips on how to counteract them. This content is largely pulled from science journalist Melinda Wenner Moyer’s brilliant piece for Elemental last week — which I highly recommend you read in its entirety — on why even the most reasonable people you know (and possibly you yourself) are bending Covid safety rules.
